Saturday, July 14, 2007

Crossing the line one too many times

I'd like to introduce you to someone today, in case you aren't yet acquainted.

His name is Ted Rall. Perhaps you've heard of him: he's one of the most well-known cartoonists (and op-ed writers) alive today. He's also one of the most vile, despicable, hateful, bigoted, unhinged people alive. However, don't consider him on the fringe; the bio from his website shows just how celebrated he is (emphasis mine):

... Rall's cartoons were signed for national syndication. He moved to Universal Press Syndicate in 1996.

In 1996, he was one of three Finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. He was one of the New York Times' most reprinted cartoonists in 1997, 1999 and 2001. He also did color strips for both Time Magazine and Fortune Magazine from 1998 to 2001. He was awarded the 1998 Deadline Club Award by the Society of Professional Journalists for his cartoons. Rall received first place in both the 1995 and 2000 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards for Cartoons. The award, founded in 1968, recognizes distinguished work on behalf of disadvantaged Americans.

Ted Rall has shown appalling hatred towards our troops and America time and time again.

There was a time when service in U.S. military was honorable and professionally rewarding. But because of politicians who use the military to pump up corporate profits instead of defending us, that was a long time ago. Americans with personal integrity should boycott the volunteer military and discourage everyone they care about to do the same. "They come from parts of the country where jobs are hard to find," an acquaintance condescendingly excuses the enlistees. Whatever happened to personal responsibility? I'd rather sleep under a bridge, eating trash out of a Dumpster, than murder human beings for Halliburton.

If we're attacked by a foreign power, as we last were in 1941 at Pearl Harbor, Americans will line up to volunteer. World War II, won six decades ago by a storied generation of draftees and volunteers, was fought to defend American freedom. But we haven't fought an honorable war since.

Whether or not I am a patriot is for others to judge. I do love this country, however, and I’m fighting my damnedest to remind my fellow Americans of our core values, those we all learned as children, and to stop the Hard Right from revolutionizing us into a neofascist nightmare. (By the way, I don’t recall labeling myself. And another by the way: since when are socialists anti-patriotic?)

...

And I might think better of you when you stopped using loaded rhetoric like refering to resistance fighters (a clearer and more neutral term) as “terrorists.” Unless, of course, you also consider George Washington to have been a terrorist, in which case we’ll let it go.

He's most known for mocking fallen hero Pat Tillman as an idiot and a sap. Pat Tillman was the man who gave up a multi-million dollar NFL contract to enlist in the Army and fight for his country. Rall drew the following cartoon (click for larger image):

And now, Ted Rall is at it again: slandering our troops in the worst way, mocking everything that makes them honorable.

Now, all in one cartoon, he shows his naked contempt for the very traits of the American soldier that helped give birth to this country and secured it for 231 years: willingness to sacrifice, faith, courage, respect for the commander-in-chief, and determination to complete their mission.

How many times can Ted Rall slander our military and our country without getting called out on it? Well, I take that back -- conservatives call him out. But liberals, with their "moral authority" stay silent. What a double standard, huh? If Ann Coulter does so much as mock what Bill Maher says on HBO, she's called out on it and castigated in the media for weeks. It's front page news. Ted Rall does it on a weekly basis, and nothing. Nada. Not a peep.

And not only is he not called out on it, but he's given awards. Liberal publications heap respectability on him and embrace him as an outspoken, prolific "neo-traditionalist" who is launching a "vehicle for change".

But still -- all politics aside -- how dare he slander and smear the very people who give him the right to slander and smear them? He has the right to think and say whatever he pleases -- thanks to those he so gleefully attacks -- but decent Americans everywhere should be outraged. And just because he can think it, and say it, and draw it, and write it, does not mean that he should, or that Universal Press Syndicate has to continue to syndicate him, or that supposedly respectable institutions, such as the New York Times, have to publish his vile cartoons.

If liberals had any decency in them whatsoever, they would shun this despicable excuse for an American. But instead, he is welcomed, lauded, praised, rewarded -- for slandering the very people who give him the freedom he loves to take advantage of.

If the paper you read carries his cartoons and/or op-ed columns, contact them and demand that they remove his material as well.

Just because he has the right to draw and write whatever he pleases thanks to the Frist Amendment does not mean he can escape accountability.

accountability:nounresponsibility to someone or for some activity

I'm not asking for him to be censored. I am asking for him to no longer be embraced and revered, for he has crossed the line too many times. For the sake of decency, and for our heroes fighting overseas whom he so easily mocks and bashes, we must stand up against him in protest. Contact Universal Press Syndicate. You can even contact Ted Rall himself. However you choose to do it, speak out against him.

This kind of hatred should not be embraced any longer.

Oh, and to close, some lovely hypocrisy from Ted Rall, in a Universal Press Syndicate interview, in which he proclaims he doesn't like hateful responses or vitriol (imagine that -- someone who spouts hate so often doesn't like hate!):

Hateful responses get under my skin, death threats obviously more so. But there are other jobs for people who are afraid of extreme reactions to their political or other points of view: Dog catcher. Computer programmer. Centrist Democratic Senator. As someone else said, it's not about not being afraid; it's about what you do when you are afraid. I worry about the vitriol but I can't let it stop me. Besides, for every reader who hates my stuff are many more who like it!

14
comments:

Outstanding post on this piece of sub human scum. After my blood pressure drops, I expect I will be sending a letter off to his syndicate (for what little good it will do). Keep up the good work, and for what it's worth this post will get you on this ol retired Sailors blog.

I rent an apartment during the week near a major Army base, and a lot of my fellow tenants are in the Army.They are, as Mr. Rall, says, living in poverty, and poorly educated. The sergeant living across from me is a prostitute, drug using single mom. When I leave my apartment @4am to go to work at my client, it's a rareday when I don't see someone in uniform lying drunk in the hallways. All of them seem to collect foodstamps, yet they buy a lot of booze from the local inner city market, where I buy the NY Times and WSJ. The other day I saw a young woman in uniform right sleeve rolled up, shooting something into her arm. By the looks of her arm, she was an experienced user. Loud drunken carousing is the norm, which is why I endeavor to complete my work and leave Thursday night, when the weekend drinking/whoring binge begins.The officers aren't any better. They come around to inspect the apartments, and most of the time they are drunk. Some of them carry bottles of beer or hard liquor. They also have trouble with numbers, in that they can't tell which apartments are occupied by their people and which are occupied by civilian engineers on contract.I'm ex USAF from 30 years ago, and I've never seen the armed forces in such sorry shape.Rall does have a point, IMHO.

I guess he might, if your limited experience applies to the entire United States military. I'm betting it doesn't, though. This kind of reasoning really, really gets under my skin. I remember well seeing it just after the Virginia Tech massacre as Aussie prime minister John Howard implied it was the American gun culture that spawned that evil creature who gunned 33 Hokies down that day. And I'm betting your experience is no more representative of the American military at large than that aforementioned evil creature is representative of the American gun culture at large.And yes, for the record, Ted Rall is indeed a piece of sub-human scum, a sorry excuse for a man and an American.Great blog, Cassy. I think I'm gonna have to add it to my daily reads...

I, for one, am a liberal who thinks Ted Rall goes way over the line. I find his expressions shocking and even repulsive. It's not the "point" he is making, it is HOW he is making it. Rall is so full of rage and hate that it is eating him up. I can't imagine him ever smiling or feeling content.

Rall is to the cause of libreralims as Coulter is to the cause of conservatism. Both may have some legitimate points to make, but both are crass, opportunistic, bitter, and mean people whose main method of making their points is to gratuitously demean others.

As repulsive as I find Rall to be, it amazes and confounds me that many, many conservatives who will criticize Rall are also adoring admirers of Coulter.

van helsing - How is it comparing Coulter with Rall out of line? Coulter has basically called me and all liberal Christians godless and treasonous, has wished death on her ideological opponents as well as on innocent civilians, and has used the worst of racial and homophobic slurs against people she doesn't like, and really doesn't even know, for no good reason at all other than to sell books. It's not enough for you just say Rall and Coulter are incomparably different, you need to explain to me the qualitative difference between the two.

I wonder how many liberal drug using prostitutes we can find as a counter example to the 'anonymous' post above to balance it off - I suspect there are many, many more than what is being cited. Perhaps we could collectively pen a comic strip about them from some superior vantage point to gain the adoration of the MSM. More likely the MSM filters will kick in and they will become the "poor unloved...", unlike the stereotypes our liberal friends want to foist on the military.

Rall tries to make some sort of social comment in his cartoons but he essentially exposes his "liberal superiority complex" for all to see. Like John Kerry, he sneers at the troops and the values of patriotism and courage which motivate them. To him, every soldier is a moron and their leadership are corrupt and inept. Neither is even slightly accurate. After thirty years in the military I have met all kinds. Some bad, some good and some brilliant. On the average they were ordinary people.

So I wonder whether Mr. Rall will allow us to stereotype and charactature him with the same sharp razor. If he goes out for a beer he will become a "crazed drunken cartoonist". If he takes his GF on a date he can be the "sex-crazed stalker", if he gets a parking ticket he can be the "scofflaw" and if he directs an employee to do a task he can be the "corrupt profit-hungry baron".

Thank you for your refreshing voice of freedom and patriotism, not to mention what we in the Air Force called "clear thinking." The comments by anonymous are quite questionable. Sir, where and when did you serve? He or she should know that random drug testing has been in place for the last twenty years. Yes, about 1% test positive, and are then kicked out.

With a volunteer military, they are there because they want to be. They know the rules, so, to avoid losing the job that they WANT, they will avoid the actions that will cause it. And seeing as how I saw people go to jail for cheating on a test, the scenario he draws up is false.

I'm in the military and don't really get offended by what Ted Rall says and writes. Personally, I could give two sh*ts about what that buffoon says, why should I waste my time even acknowledging his existence? It reminds me of a quote from James Webb (back before he lost his mind). In a radio interview he was asked about Jane Fonda and he responded "I wouldn't cross the street to watch her slit her wrists." That pretty much sums it up

You can spot the haters from a mile away. As for the "poverty stricken/ignorant" soldiers, I bet there are some; but the only guys I know who've been in Iraq all have degrees or are working on them. One of 'em owns Cessna 414 and a couple of other planes. But then, liberals always think everyone who doesn't agree with them must be stupid or ignorant. What do you expect from people who are motivated by hate and self-loathing?

War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.-- John Stuart Mill

Feel free to e-mail me at cassyblog@hotmail.com about anything you'd like; you can also add me on MySpace or Facebook. I welcome all questions and comments; criticism and praise. However, for anyone planning to send hate-mail: keep in mind that anything you send me may end up getting published. Thanks for reading, and I look forward to hearing from you!